I was actually thinking about gamergate this while grinding in Ni no Kuni.

I was thinking about on making a whole thread about gamergate and the state of gaming and the states (past present and future) of internet culture as whole.

I'm kinda thinking those things are closely related and need to be discussed hand in hand with each other. Also, I'm pretty sure that the anti feminist segment of gamers is a part of a larger issue: how shitty so much of game culture really is. Sure there's good parts (Notch FTW), but when you look at the numbers, there's a whole lot of shittiness. There's obviously a lot of someone's not only buying all the spunkgargleweewee ("Spunkgargleweewees are the Michael Bay movies of gaming.") and let's not forget, perhaps more importantly, there's also a SHIT TON of people pirating same said games. It's in no small part thanks to that we have all the DRM bullshit (it's not the only reason, but I digress). Also, shitty gamers have helped lower the bar, not only in quality of experience and product, but also of content standards.

So I guess I'll make the thread. As I see it, there's enough to talk about on it's own and it can kinda veer away from the main topic of other threads.

_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Last edited by Darqcyde on Thu Oct 23, 2014 8:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

I think it's important to look at how we got here, i.e. how did this happen to be seemingly commonplace?

These types of attacks are bad, horrific, deplorable, etc., and there's no good excuse for them, but I think that when attempting to diagnose and treat a disease, it's important to try and figure out where it came from.

I'm thinking it's not nearly as simple as "blame the 4chan and it's clones", but they did play a part.

I'm of the belief that it's indicative of vestigial attitudes, beliefs, and practices that are no longer pertinent in todays current culture.

Also, I think many have failed to realize just how much "internet culture" has integrated with modern culture in general, and in fact, I would posit that they're nigh inseparable. I think a lot of the problematic people are those who want to maintain some sort of fictitious "virtual status quo" that never truly existed in the first place; they are the cyber equivalent of those who want to "return America to it's former glory"(read: the conservatism of the 1950's) and other conservative movements (hey there, Tea Party).

I've been fortunate to be a first person witness to a lot of this (and there are millions of others as well) in that I had some internet access as early as the mid 90's. Back then, anonymity was ubiquitous and the disconnect between users was vast.

You didn't connect with people per se, you connected with avatars and handles, there were literately layers of removal between individuals on both ends. Google didn't exist and the alternatives at the time couldn't even compare. Even the idea of finding out people's personal info was limited to very few people with superior technological skills and those with access to skiptrace resources.

So when you were in a Yahoo or Aol chatroom or a BBS bulletinboard or a newsgroup, if you told someone to "die in a fire" and that you were "gonna kill them and eat their babies", it wasn't you actually telling them, it was a persona talking to another persona. It was the verbal equivalent of two players attacking each other via PVP in a video game. It was very unpersonalized.

But now, we are sooooo far removed from that. We have people citing their victims by name, home and work address, and posting google earth photos of these places.

And I think that most of the attackers either don't get this, they're so scared and angry that they're blind to it, or they're just straight up dumb assholes.

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Anywho, thinking about this is kinda downer, and I got work off today, so now that the kids are done with school Imma gonna go play me some Ni no Kuni.

Feel free to comment and post whatevers here._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Last edited by Darqcyde on Thu Oct 23, 2014 10:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

There is very little to say about gamergate besides "gamergate is terrible" - full stop. The calls are coming from inside the house. It's a fucking terrifying morass of people who are engaging in a furious pace of doxxing and harassment and death threats. Even the "well meaning" ones involved are tilting at the silliest windmill possible: ethics in games journalism? Games journalism had been a flagrant joke for years and years. There has been no semblance of journalistic integrity in games journalism. Funny, how suddenly it becomes a cause celebre the minute it gives a stewing sociopathic mass of anti-feminists, redpillers and mra's an opportunity to give their misogynistic obsessions a thin veneer of credibility, and several women to target with unending cruelty. Even Felicia Day was doxxed ten minutes after she spoke up.

Gamergate is Shit. The end. Its not about saving games journalism. It's a vessel now commandeered by people who are neurotic and antagonistic towards women who have breached into the territory of a bottom dwelling gatekeeper crud mass.

So Sam, is there anyway for the idea of "integrity in gaming journalism" to NOT be an oxymoron? And if most of it is shit, where are the good places and people?

Mind you, I don't disagree with you. I've mostly avoided direct interaction with gaming journalism myself for years. Most of what I have been directed towards were either press releases on new products, or links people (mostly you and WoC) have posted here._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

"integrity in gaming journalism" will happen, to the extent that it ever does, when we reach the point where game journalists and game developers don't have the relationships that are fostered by starting out together in a small niche industry where everyone knows everyone else, and which later grows explosively.

The main thing is that #GamerGate DOES in fact condemn all forms of bullying and threats. The only people who claim that the threats came from GamerGate are those who received the threats.

Immediately after Brianna Wu's doxxing, members of 8Chan responded hostilely to the poster who dumped the personal information, and got the thread locked. And yet, she still blamed the movement.

The threats sent to USU also had nothing to do with GamerGate, and never claimed to be associated with the movement. Only Anita Sarkeesian (who thinks there is some organized group against her personally) associated the threats with GamerGate. (She also thinks GamerGate has its roots in /v/ the musical (https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/524713524979712000), and that every member of GamerGate had already sent her threats and harassment before the hashtag was created. Clearly, not the expert on the movement)

All the same, I understand that this is a satire, and GG is the victim of the satire. It's a clever and funny article. I think the joke would have worked just as well without saying that some members of GamerGate rape and murder women, but hey, what can you do? Keep up the great work ClickHole. Like no other site on the Internet, your articles really make you think.

A jumbled thread of a facebook post sharing an article by a black comedy spoof website? That's where you're going to take a brave stand for you and your buddies? Keep fighting the good fight, hero!_________________Once, at a local NOW meeting where I was the only male among about a dozen women, a feminism trivia contest was held. I came in third.

Also, this thread is like lighting the Guest signal. Are we that bored?_________________Once, at a local NOW meeting where I was the only male among about a dozen women, a feminism trivia contest was held. I came in third.

I think gaming journalism will improve when people are less likely to be threatened with death and rape for having an opinion probably why not.

I mean what else is their to say at this point?

I mainly made this thread because I figure that gamergate and various other gamer issues aren't just feminist issues, although they are a large part of it, so I figured that it would be more pertinent to give it's own thread than having the discussion clog up the feminism thread.

I figured this is more a discussion of game culture and related issues as opposed to the games themselves._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

I've been with a big bunch of industry vets who have been outspoken about the complete lack of ethics in games "journalism" for going on seven years now or so now. It is an extension of tightly reined games marketing, nothing more. Writing about games is an insipid pocket industry that necessitates placating the handful of large distributors that monopsonize(kind of?) the industry, at present. It is all inside work and favor trading and that won't change until there is a collapse of the present model, either distribution wise or in terms of creating a real market for advance reviews similar to movies, and that probably won't happen until the industry painfully unionizes.

So basically if that sounds a bit out of left field compared to what the gamergate chucklefucks are soundboarding, it's because they weren't actually interested in the integrity of the industry until it became a shakey excuse to mobilize a bunch of manchildren who sincerely believe they are victims of massive culture-dominating misogyny.

Bad journalism isn't anything new, people are now just using it as a convenient excuse to do more bad shit.

Best comment I found:

Quote:

Oh dear Lord. You have come here to tell me that GamerGate is not about women? That it is mere coincidence that they've been hounding women? That, even though we've known for years about the payola system in gaming that because some women slept with some journalist and now there's a "scandal" that it isn't about women?